The 5 W’s of the Living Newspaper Project
What
Who
Everything you need to know before you begin your adventure…
The original Living Newspapers were created by actors, directors,
and screen writers who were employed by the Federal Theater Project
during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The Living Newspaper Project that you will be participating in is
sponsored by the Humanities Institute and the Rapoport Center for
Human Rights, both at UT Austin.
Over the course of the project, you will have several grad
consultants who will come into your class to help with the project.
These are graduate students at UT Austin who are experts in their
field and have worked on various Living Newspaper Projects in other
classrooms.
The Living Newspaper is a genre of theater that focuses on
important human rights issues of the day. The script comes from
various primary sources (i.e. newspaper articles, magazine
articles, transcripts, websites, podcasts, documentaries, etc)
that have been combined in new and interesting ways. Imagine a
collage of the words, stories, characters, and ideas that occur in
the various primary sources.
[A second paragraph could explain exactly what the students will be
doing: research, writing, performing, etc; this is based on the
planning that occurs before the actual introduction]
Where
When
[This is filled in with an appropriate schedule]
[Again, this is filled in with appropriate information about visits
to computer labs, performance spaces, consultant visits, etc.]
The 5 W’s of the Living Newspaper Project
(Not a W, but
important)
How
Why
Everything you need to know before you begin your adventure…
It is incredibly important to be informed about what is going on in
the world and how issues of human rights both directly and
indirectly affect your life. This Living Newspaper Project is one
way of doing this.
It is also important to get good at researching valid source
material, stating an opinion and supporting it with research,
working in collaboration, and following through on a project.
The Living Newspaper is good for all of this (and more).
This project is done in three phases, as you may have guessed from
the “when” above. The first phase is research; here you will
research various human rights issues and pick a topic. The second
phase is script writing; here you will work with various source
materials and some dramatic exercises to construct (not write) a
script. The third phase is production; here you will work to take
this script to a form of production previously determined by your
teacher. At various times throughout this process, you will have
the help of group members, grad consultants from UT, and—obviously—
your teacher.